Luna opened her eyes and looked around the dark cave. She was cradled in Kain’s arms as he leaned up against the wall behind him, still sleeping. She lightly hopped out of his embrace and landed on the ground, not waking him up in the process. She stretched her legs and her chest, feeling the kinks all crack in her muscles and embraced every bit of feeling she had. She loved the fact that she could enjoy such simple things and appreciate them, that she could even think about such things in the first place.
‘Of course, if I said that to him, he would just tease me.’ She chuckled inwardly.
She looked around and found her shield lying in the corner, leaning against the wall. Sending anti-gravity energy to it, she brought it to her side and hopped onto the inner side of the shield, lying in on the flat surface of the kite shield. Looking around, she was about to wake Kain up when her stomach growled.
‘Oh yeah, I haven’t eaten since we had a few of those weird sweetly bitter fruits. Hmm… What should I eat? I can eat grass, find some fruit… or maybe bugs? He’s probably hungry as well. I’ll ask him first’
She flew over to his side and lightly tapped his head, [Hey, Big Brother, I’m hungry, so I’m going to find some food to eat. Do you want any?]
His eyes opened and looked at her. He stretched his back and yawned, working every kink out of his back. [Mm… wait, what do you eat?]
[Whatever I can find. Grass, fruits, vegetables, bugs, le-]
[Wait, you eat bugs? I thought that rabbits couldn’t eat bugs. Or grass for that matter. Though, you could be different from the rabbits that I know so… But either way, I don’t think that bugs can taste that good, can they?] He asked, appalled.
She had no idea why he was so disgusted by the notion, [They aren’t that bad, you know! The only thing better is some good meat!] She retorted.
Kain looked at her with a deadpan expression. [You… can eat meat? Where did you… even get it from?]
[It was lying on the ground! I was living near the Dragonoid tower at one point, so after I got over the smell of blood, It was basically free food.] She said innocently, [It tasted good!]
[Well, either way, I’m not about to let you eat bugs, okay? I’ll make a pot so we can boil meat, then I’ll go get some. Sounds good?] He asked.
[Wait! Can I go hunt? I can fight now, so I want to test my abilities. Can I?] She gave the best puppy dog expression she could muster. She knew that he would give in to her desires if she did.
He looked at her innocent eyes, seemingly begging to let her go play, and groaned, [Fine… But you have to stay careful, Understood?]
She jumped up and down on her shield, cheering, [Yay! Don’t worry! I’ll be careful! I’ll find something mean to eat!] She zipped out of the cave on her shield before he could get a word in. She zipped out of the cave and through the trees, looking for something to hunt.
‘Hmm… What should I hunt? Maybe a green ape? No… they’re too many of them. Besides, they’ll probably eat the ones I take down before I can do anything. What about a glass deer? I know what happens to predators, but… I tried the scraps of one and it was really good. That could work, but I need to be careful! No need to deprive my Big Brother of his little sister so early, right?’ She made up her mind and decided to hunt a glass deer, a type of animal that lived in the forest and stuck near rivers. She went over all of the information she had on the creatures before beginning her hunt. ‘They stick by rivers and travel in herds. They use strength in numbers to intimidate any predators; not that such a simple trick will work on me! Anyway, if a member of their herd is killed, they will use energy at their maximum capacity to escape from the enemy. Due to their most common enemy being green apes, they are more suited to large scale fights instead of attacking a small flying bunny rabbit, so I have the advantage. But the most dangerous thing they have is their energy. They use it to make both ice from the river water and glass from sand next to the river. I’ll have to ask Kain how it works, but they can do both at the same time. Considering that they can also launch the glass and ice somehow, I’ll have to use this shield to keep safe from that. Okay, gameplan! I’ll drop out of the sky from above, use a wind blade to slice one of their heads off, then I’ll let the rest run, collect the body, and go back to the cave before Big Brother can even make his preparations. Alright, I’m so going to win.’
She patted her face with her front paws, psyching herself up for her hunt. She looked around, unsatisfied with her range of vision, and began to climb up. She cleared the trees after climbing a few dozen feet and she looked around from high up. There, a sea of trees met her eyes. She looked around and soon found a gap in the tree cover that she knew could only mean a river. She flew over to the river in just a few minutes, and saw the slightly glowing river water beneath her. She glanced around, but found nothing but smaller animals like turtles, little chitin covered creatures with two legs, and some more rabbits. She gazed disdainfully at the other rabbits as they ate grass, bugs, fallen fruits, or vegetables. She found herself better in every way, so there was no need to even consider such small, weak creatures.
Seeing no glass deer, she moved downstream on her flattened shield, flying unimpeded as she darted past animals that she would have been afraid of were she a normal rabbit. She reaffirmed her happiness with her situation, as she was now able to think about the world around her intelligently, instead of simply fearing and fleeing from everything else. She soon found a small lake in the middle of the forest with a herd of glass deer drinking from it. She held her breath as she checked to make sure they had not spotted her.
‘Perfect!’ She screamed inwardly. They were too focused on threats from the forest to check the sky above them. She silently hung over the herd, counting them. 18 adults, 7 children. She knew better than to attack the children, as it would impede the next generation’s numbers. She also knew not to overhunt, as that could cause the population to go into a nosedive, disrupting the balance of the ecosystem. She looked for the most vulnerable one, trying to get a clean kill before they could retaliate. She found it convenient that they would instinctually run whenever a herd member died as she only needed to hunt one of them and they would leave whenever that happened, so there was no need to chase them. She looked around and found the one that was the most vulnerable. It was a large buck (male deer) with large antlers that shone in the dim light of the blue space like aquamarine glass. The deer was drinking from the lake and was a decent distance from the rest of the herd, so they were unlikely to be able to help during the attack. As she finally found her target, she prepared a wind blade attack, readying herself for the fall. She deactivated the anti-gravity energy, letting the shield fall but also letting her reactivate it at will. She was about 50 feet up and dropping fast, cutting through the air above the clearing with her shield by her side. When she was just 20 feet above the deer, she launched her wind blade and used the anti-gravity energy to slowly decelerate.
She finally came to a stop a few feet above the ground and looked around with vigilance. She found the herd staring at her with wide open eyes, some even preparing attacks with the sand and water. Looking to her side was not the corpse of the deer as she expected, but the deer standing a bit to the side of where the blade had been sent. It had a small nick on its neck but was otherwise unharmed. Luna clicked her tongue, remaking her wind blade while preparing to defend against an onslaught of glass and ice shards. The deer, for their part, looked bewildered. She assumed that their threat assessment was very primitive, so they were trying to figure out if she was a threat or not.
‘At least it gives me more time to prepare…’ She muttered inwardly.
While they were gaping at her, she wove her energy into the water and covertly made a water blade. To do it without them noticing, she had to make it much more slowly than she was accustomed to, but she persisted. Due to the slow assembly of the water blade, however, she had more focus to spare on making a wind wall to fend off the incoming barrage. Her defense came not a moment too soon, as an ice shard smashed into the wall and was sent spinning to her right. She looked and saw that the shard came from the deer she had tried to sneak attack, and sent a wind blade to him with an annoyed expression. The deer instinctually jumped to the side, avoiding decapitation. The blade clashed against the water, splashing it many feet beyond the point of impact.
As if it were the signal, the deer began to barrage her location with shards of ice and glass. Luckily, the shards harmlessly bounced off of her wind wall, as they were not fast enough to break through it. She, in turn, pelted her original target with wind blades, watching him hop around in an attempt to dodge them. Taking her time to analyze the enemy, she noticed that they created the ice shards on the side of their body that was facing the river and their glass shards on the other side, with them in the middle. She renewed her mental note to ask Kain about how they did it later. For over a minute, the deer shot shards of glass and ice at Luna, while she shot wind blades at the large buck. Soon, however, the battle had to end, and Luna was the one to deal the final blow.
As the buck danced around, it came just 5 feet away from the place where she had been making a water blade, which had just finished completion. She shot one last wind blade at the buck, and when it jumped to the side, she shot the water blade in the trajectory of where the buck had thrown himself. Before he knew what happened, his head rolled on the ground, with violet-blue blood staining the sand around it.
Almost immediately, as if a spell had been lifted, the rest of the herd dashed into the forest. Before even 5 seconds passed, Luna was alone with the deer carcass. She sighed in satisfaction. ‘My endurance in fending off attackers was good. I didn’t feel a bit of stress. I think I need to work on an attack that lets me deal with dodging opponents. But, either way, I got something good to eat!’ She scooped up the deer using her shield and meandered her way back to the cave. She got lost once, but found a few wild potatoes before getting back on track. After 10 minutes of travel, she finally found the cave and entered.
Inside, Kain was putting a large black metal pot onto a metal stand. Underneath them, was a small campfire, ready to be used. Kain caught notice of her and smiled gently, [Just in time. How was it?] He asked, taking the headless deer off of her shield. He began to butcher it, cutting it up into the best cuts.
She smiled in reply, [I learned that I need a new type of attack, but it was fun!]
Kain laughed in response, [That’s good to hear. Anyway, sit tight for a bit, these potatoes need to cook a bit more than the meat. She sat down near the fire as Kain ignited it, sending flames licking the bottom of the pot. He had already filled it with water, so after boiling the potatoes and meat in it, he served them to Luna. It was so good that she shed a tear of joy. It was the best thing she had ever eaten.
